Roundup: Comments About Historians
Thursday, February 12, 2004 Interview with Robert Gildea
Jennie Rothenberg interviews Robert Gildea, in the Atlantic
(Nov. 2003):
In the immense canon of books about Europe during World War II, numerous
works center on France, immortalizing the glory of la Résistance or
revealing dark scandals of Nazi collaboration. Marianne in Chains is a different
kind of story. In its pages, author Robert Gildea tells the tales of ordinary
French people who were less concerned with abetting or resisting the Nazis
than with maintaining their everyday lives.
Rather than surveying the entire nation, Gildea chose to focus on the Loire
Valley, a coastal region that was part of France's occupied northern zone.
Exploring newly opened archives and interviewing numerous older citizens,
he was able to reassemble a picture of daily life during the occupation, complete
with farmers, café owners, priests, and accordion players. More sensational
characters do make occasional appearances: underground activists, corrupt
officials, and informants reminiscent of Dickens's sinister Madame Defarge.
But Gildea's research centers first and foremost on mainstream citizens, and
his stated purpose is to move "beyond praise and blame... to understand
actions and sentiments in terms of the options and values obtained under the
occupation, the one extremely limited and the other extremely fluid."
Compared with other parts of Europe—most notably the Eastern Front and
the Balkans—the Nazi occupation of France was relatively gentle. The
French, whose Latin heritage ranked them high in Hitler's racial hierarchy,
were given more freedom than those of other nations to maintain their local
governments, churches, and ways of life. Food was scarce, but rather than
focusing on hunger and poverty, Gildea looks at the resourcefulness of the
French people as they satisfied their daily needs through clandestine networks
and "gray markets." In one chapter entitled "Circuses,"
he spends two full pages listing youth clubs and leisure organizations that
existed in occupied France, demonstrating that the French people did not spend
the war years "cowering at home."
Gildea's demystifying approach to history has not always made him popular
with French academics. His book begins with an account of a 1997 paper he
presented at the Academy of Tours, in which he argued that not all French
people spent the war years in misery and starvation, and the riot his conclusions
provoked from the audience. This reaction inspired Gildea to expand his research,
and the conclusions he draws in Marianne in Chains are comprehensive and nuanced
....
Posted by Editor at 4:02 PM
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An interview with Howard Zinn, conducted by Kirk Johnson, editor of American
Amnesia (Feb. 2004):
Howard Zinn, the historian most known for "A People's History of the
United States," recently talked with American Amnesia about foreign policy,
Iraq, historical amnesia, and democracy. His book, which has sold millions
of copies, is unique in its advocacy for a different type of history - one
that focuses less on the traditional white founding fathers and more on the
(not always glamorous) foundation upon which this country was established.
Born in Brooklyn, Zinn worked in a shipyard before fighting in World War II
as an Air Force Bombardier, carrying out missions over France and Germany.
After the war he received a PhD in history from Columbia University. He is
professor emeritus at Boston University.
His viewpoints provoke strong responses from both the left and the right
- which is why American Amnesia sees it worthwhile to include them in our
discussion of history & foreign policy. He is also the first in a series
of similar discussions which will include Noam Chomsky, Errol Morris, Niall
Ferguson, Michael Walzer, and others. He may stop by American Amnesia and
answer follow-up questions in the comments section (no guarantees).
A: We’re confronted today with alarming statistics from various groups
connected with education, that essentially say we’re forgetting our past
– that even the “titan” moments in history are slipping from
the collective memory. What do you make of these stats?
Z: We're forgetting the past because neither our educational system nor our
media inform us about the past. For instance, the history of the Vietnam War
has been very much forgotten. I believe this amnesia is useful to those conducting
our present foreign policy. It would be embarrassing if the story of the Vietnam
War were told at a time when we are engaged in a war which has some of the
same characteristics: government deception, the killing of civilians through
bombing, scaring the American people (world communism in that case, terrorism
in this one). As for the history beyond Vietnam, that would certainly be damaging
to present policy. Because if young people knew the long history of U.S. expansion,
through violence and deception, they would not easily believe that we are
in Iraq to promote democracy. They would know how many false claims were made
in the past to justify aggressive acts. They would learn of the expansion
across the continent, destroying Indian villages, committing massacres. They
would learn of the deceptions surrounding the Spanish-American War, of the
bloody war in the Philippines leading to the deaths of perhaps 600,000 Filipinos.
They would learn of the many interventions in the Caribbean. And they would
see that these interventions did not bring democracy, and they were connected
to U.S. commercial interests.
A: Do you see historical amnesia – that is, forgetting both recent and
distant history (how many people even remember Kosovo, or even Afghanistan?)
– as an ailment of the younger generation, or as a continuation of the
“way we’ve always been.”?
Z: It's not an ailment of the younger generation but of that part of the
older generation that controls the media and the educational system. I find
that young people are hungry for information, but their sources are too often
the major television channels, which are controlled by a tiny group of wealthy
corporations, with ties and interests close to the government.
A: How do you feel about how the citation of historical events is portrayed
in the media today – often as reflecting opinions of “conspiracy
theorists,” on the margins of society? It seems as if the value of history
in public discourse has been crippled somewhat.
Z: When critics of U.S. policy point to crass motivations behind our policy:
like corporate profit, and political advantage, this is often labeled "conspiracy
theory." There are indeed some untenable, improvable conspiracy theories
floating around, but there are in fact real "conspiracies" -- That
is, groups of people who have certain plans which they don't reveal to the
public. For instance, the plans for the control of the oil in the Middle East
are not made public, and instead they talk of overthrowing tyranny, instituting
democracy, bringing freedom, etc.
Posted by Editor at 9:15 PM
| Comments (0) Click here to return to the top of the page. Richard Smith: Champion of the New Lincoln Presidential Library Steve Neal, in the
Chicago Sun-Times (Feb. 11. 2004):
As the nation celebrates the 195th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth
on Thursday, Richard Norton Smith is making long-term plans to extend the
Lincoln legacy.
Smith, 50, director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum,
who works out of an office in the Old State Capitol in Springfield, is looking
ahead to the 2009 Lincoln Bicentennial; the 2008 150th anniversary of the
Lincoln-Douglas debates, and the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, 2010-2015.
''Nearly two centuries after his birth, Abraham Lincoln's greatness is universally
conceded,'' Smith has written. ''Yet the man himself is fast receding in popular
memory. To many Americans our 16th president remains at once the most universally
recognizable and elusive of figures.''
Smith said it is the goal of the Lincoln Library and Museum ''to convey Lincoln
whole, employing 21st century technology to make the 19th century live again,''
and to establish Springfield as ''the preeminent center of Lincoln scholarship.''
The Lincoln library has more than 47,000 Lincoln documents in its collection,
including an original copy of the Gettysburg Address.
Gov. Blagojevich, who recruited the nationally renowned historian for this
task, predicts that Smith will transform the Springfield complex into ''the
most exciting, the most dynamic and most successful presidential library in
the nation.'' To help Smith in this effort, Blagojevich recently tapped former
Gov. Jim Edgar, with whom Blagojevich shares a passion for history, as chairman
of the Lincoln Library and Museum foundation board.
Blagojevich has also named Loop lawyer Wayne Whalen, one of the chief architects
of the 1970 Illinois Constitution, and Bernard M. Judge, publisher of the
Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, as members of the library's board.
Smith, who has been on the job since December, previously served as director
of the Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Herbert Hoover
presidential libraries and the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the
University of Kansas.
Among the reasons Smith is excited about the Lincoln center's potential to
be a national tourist attraction is that with more than 50,000 square feet
for the museum, the exhibition area will be three times larger than the Reagan
library museum, which had been the largest in the presidential library system.
''Those responsible for conceiving the Lincoln Library and Museum have gotten
the most important thing right,'' Smith said. ''They have designed a museum
of unparalleled size, originality and educational promise.''
Posted by Editor at 8:58 PM
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Bernard Lewis often tells audiences about an encounter he once had in Jordan. The Princeton University historian, author of more than 20 books on Islam and the Middle East, says he was chatting with Arab friends in Amman when one of them trotted out an argument familiar in that part of the world.
"We have time, we can wait," he quotes the Jordanian as saying. "We got rid of the Crusaders. We got rid of the Turks. We'll get rid of the Jews."
Hearing this claim "one too many times," Mr. Lewis says, he politely shot back, "Excuse me, but you've got your history wrong. The Turks got rid of the Crusaders. The British got rid of the Turks. The Jews got rid of the British. I wonder who is coming here next."
The vignette, recounted in the 87-year-old scholar's native British accent, always garners laughs. Yet he tells it to underscore a serious point. Most Islamic countries have failed miserably at modernizing their societies, he contends, beckoning outsiders -- this time, Americans -- to intervene....
Mr. Lewis's work has many critics. Some academics say Mr. Lewis's descriptions of Arab and Muslim failures epitomize what the late Edward Said of Columbia University dubbed "Orientalism" -- the shading of history to justify Western conquest. Mideast historian Juan Cole of the University of Michigan praises Mr. Lewis's scholarly works earlier in his career but says his more-popular writings of recent years tend to caricature Muslims as poor losers, helpless and enraged.
Mr. Cole is among those who say Mr. Lewis's call for military intervention to transform failed Muslim states risks making the culture clash between Islamic lands and the West worse. So far, they say, Iraq looks more like a breeding ground for terrorism than a showcase of democracy -- not surprising, they say, given that the U.S. invaded an old and proud civilization.
"Lewis has lived so long, he's managed to live into an era when some people in Washington are reviving empire thinking," says Mr. Cole. "He's never understood the realities of political and social mobilization and the ways they make empire untenable."
Ilan Pappe of Haifa University says Mr. Lewis's view that political cultures can be remade through force contributed to Israel's decision to invade Lebanon in 1982. "It took the Israelis 18 years, and 1,000 soldiers killed, to abandon that strategy," Mr. Pappe says. "If the Americans operate under the same assumptions in Iraq, they'll fail the way the Israelis failed."
Call it the Lewis Doctrine. Though never debated in Congress or sanctified by presidential decree, Mr. Lewis's diagnosis of the Muslim world's malaise, and his call for a U.S. military invasion to seed democracy in the Mideast, have helped define the boldest shift in U.S. foreign policy in 50 years. The occupation of Iraq is putting the doctrine to the test.
For much of the second half of the last century, America viewed the Mideast and the rest of the world through a prism shaped by George Kennan, author of the doctrine of "containment." In a celebrated 1947 article in Foreign Affairs focused on the Soviet Union, Mr. Kennan gave structure to U.S. policy in the Cold War. It placed the need to contain Soviet ambitions above all else.
Terrorism has replaced Moscow as the global foe. And now America, having outlasted the Soviets to become the sole superpower, no longer seeks to contain but to confront, defeat and transform. How successful it is at remolding Iraq and the rest of the Mideast could have a huge impact on what sort of superpower America will be for decades to come: bold and assertive -- or inward, defensive and cut off.
As mentor and informal adviser to some top U.S. officials, Mr. Lewis has helped coax the White House to shed decades of thinking about Arab regimes and the use of military power. Gone is the notion that U.S. policy in the oil-rich region should promote stability above all, even if it means taking tyrants as friends. Also gone is the corollary notion that fostering democratic values in these lands risks destabilizing them. Instead, the Lewis Doctrine says fostering Mideast democracy is not only wise but imperative.
After Sept. 11, 2001, as policy makers fretted urgently about how to understand and deal with the new enemy, Mr. Lewis helped provide an answer. If his prescription is right, the U.S. may be able to blunt terrorism and stabilize a region that, as the chief exporter of oil, powers the industrial world and underpins the U.S.-led economic order. If it's wrong, as his critics contend, America risks provoking sharper conflicts that spark more terrorism and undermine energy security.
Posted by Editor at 9:46 PM
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David Gritten, writing in the LAT (Feb. 3, 2004):
For the last 20 years on British television, Michael Wood has done for history
what David Attenborough has done for natural history. Like Attenborough, Wood
is erudite and authoritative, but with an infectious on-camera enthusiasm
that prevents his subject matter from becoming dry.
In such series as "Legacy," "Conquistadors," "In
the Footsteps of Alexander the Great" and "Art of the Western World,"
Wood, an author as well as TV presenter, blows the cobwebs off history. He
addresses his TV audience in an earnest, almost pleading tone that commands
attention.
He wears his learning lightly, and for his latest series, "In Search
of Shakespeare" (8-9 p.m. Thursdays on PBS, through Feb. 19), which delves
into the Bard's family background and life, one might assume he would need
help. Literary critics have analyzed Shakespeare's life more thoroughly than
historians. So did Wood need to read each play in his canon, looking for clues?
"Well, no, actually," said Wood modestly, leaning against a desk
in the offices of Maya Vision, the production company of which he is a partner,
near the British Museum. "I've been a Shakespeare man since I was 11.
There are only two of his plays I've never seen on stage. At school and university
I acted in Shakespeare a lot. I even toured the States as a student with the
Oxford and Cambridge Shakespeare Company. We performed 'Twelfth Night' and
'A Midsummer Night's Dream.' "
It shows. Wood enunciates as clearly as any Shakespearean actor, announcing
his series (which in part aims to conclude whether Shakespeare really wrote
all the plays credited to him) as "an historical detective story, an
Elizabethan whodunit."
He is 55, but looks younger. There is nothing of the remote academic about
him. He is friendly, approachable, with tousled hair and a taste for casual
clothes: the series finds him clad mostly in sweaters and a leather jacket.
Several scenes show him tramping across marshy land around Shakespeare's Stratford-on-Avon
hometown in Wellington boots.
Wood admitted when he told academic colleagues he was researching the Bard's
life, he encountered scepticism. "They said: 'This is not how we're taught
to deal with William Shakespeare.' But I don't know why he should be treated
differently from Wordsworth or Melville. There's an idea he's such a genius
that you don't need to know the facts about him, that his biography doesn't
matter. But you'd never say that about any other figure."
Consequently, Wood specifically concentrated his search around the Stratford
area for clues to his early life: "It's logical. You're made by your
mom and your dad, and where you grew up." He came away with a contentious
theory -- that Shakespeare's family were Catholics, which imposed divided
loyalties on them in Protestant Elizabethan England.
He also investigated Shakespeare's "lost years" from the age of
18, when he married Anne Hathaway and left his hometown, and 28, when he burst
on to London's theater scene, an apparently full-fledged talent.
Wood is fascinated by this little-known period of the Bard's life, and typically
likens it to the years the Beatles spent honing their skills night after night
in obscure clubs in Hamburg, Germany, before returning home and achieving
"instant" fame. "It's not a trivial comparison," Wood
noted. "For me, the Beatles are among the most significant phenomena
of the last century."
Above all, Wood aims to demolish vague popular notions about Shakespeare:
"It's absurd, this idea that he's this balding guy in a ruff and a quill,
an establishment figure who's safe and conservative. He's much more complex
than that."
Wood studied history at Oxford as an undergraduate, then embarked on three
years of a doctorate on 10th century England. He left without completing it,
and entered journalism as a news reporter for the commercial channel ITV,
then for the BBC as a current-affairs producer. Around 1980, he wanted to
make a film about the Anglo-Saxons, and his supervisor suggested he present
it himself. He did, and attracted favorable reviews; it was the turning point
in Wood's career.
He had always loved seeing the world, and now relished doing so as a paid
job. He traveled the whole length of the Congo for the BBC's "Great River
Journeys," and enjoyed a long spell in the Mediterranean for a series
on Bronze Age archeology, including such sites as Troy and Knossos. This was
his first series that aired in America.
But Wood has drifted in and out of TV over the years to concentrate on writing
-- one reason he is lesser known than, say, Attenborough. He quit the BBC
in 1986, took time off and visited India. After he returned he made the "Legacy"
series about the birth of civilization in Iraq (a country of which he is particularly
fond), India, China and other ancient cultures. After that he became a frequent
broadcast for Voice of America radio. In the mid-'90s, he returned to TV,
fronting the Alexander and conquistador series.
Yet despite his skill in writing for the small screen, and his ease before
the cameras, Wood feels TV has limitations: "I think it's a very important
medium, especially for enthusing and exciting people. A TV presenter like
me is a popularizer, a link between scholars and the general public. But it's
not a medium for analysis."
Noting that his "In Search of Shakespeare," which accompanies the
TV series, was published in October, he stressed: "The book has what
I feel is the best available account of Shakespeare's background. The book's
the place where you can provide all the supporting evidence."
Posted by at 9:44 PM
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Strassel, senior editorial page writer for the Wall Street Journal
(Feb. 6, 2004):
History has its fair share of persecuted geniuses, men who were ahead of their time and made to pay for it. There's the hemlocked Socrates, the house-arrested Galileo, the exiled Rousseau. And to this list of giants it seems that we are now expected to add the name of Michael Bellesiles.
Mr. Bellesiles is the former Emory professor who shook the scholarly world in 2000 with his book "Arming America." An academic bombshell, the tome went against long-held beliefs by claiming that few colonial Americans actually owned guns. This set off a riotous public debate over whether the Second Amendment was designed to protect individual gun rights. Mr. Bellesiles was showered with prizes and media praise, becoming an instant academic star.
That is, until his peers started looking into that little thing called research. Reputable scholars in the ensuing months tore apart his work on probate and military records, travel narratives, and other documents. Mr. Bellesiles, when asked to explain, provided ever-more outlandish excuses: that his notes had been lost in a flood, that his Web site had been hacked, that he couldn't remember where he'd found certain documents. The officials of the prestigious Bancroft Prize stripped him of his award, he left Emory and Knopf chose to stop publishing his book. Most of us sighed happily and figured that was the end of that academic scandal.
But oh, no. It turns out that Mr. Bellesiles is still riding his dead horse, his nonexistent guns still blazing. Soft Skull Press (which takes pride in putting out books that other publishers avoid like ricin) has not only agreed to reissue "Arming America" but has decided to release Mr. Bellesiles's latest response to his critics. This 59-page pamphlet, "Weighed in an Even Balance," is a spirited attempt by Mr. Bellesiles to turn himself into the world's latest misunderstood genius. As such, it's worth reading for pure entertainment value.
Much of the booklet is a repeat of the professor's creative excuses and dissembling. He explains again about the flood and helpfully assures us that he is not an agent of the Zionist Occupational Government (though surely that is why the Bancroft panel took away his prize, right?). He does acknowledge a few errors, but only after pointing out that "even the finest scholars . . . make mistakes." As proof, he cites one blooper in esteemed historian David McCullough's 1,120-page biography of Harry Truman.
But the most amusing parts of the pamphlet are those meant to support our scholar's belief that he is up against a stubborn world that refuses to open its mind to the truth. And his sense of persecution and righteousness is very much on display. The very title of his book is taken from Job: "Let me be weighed in an even balance, that God may known mine integrity."
And that's just for starters. The pamphlet is sprinkled with quotations from thoughtful men, all meant to back up Mr. Bellesiles's argument that he is fighting the good fight. We hear from Isaiah Berlin: "Few things have done more harm than the belief on the part of individuals or groups . . . that he or she or they are in sole possession of the truth." One epigraph recounts that in the 16th century, Oxford used to fine any student who diverged from the teachings of Aristotle. We are clearly meant to envision a fiesty Mr. Bellesiles handing over his shillings to the dons.
We are treated to lecturing tracts about the benefits of scholarly disagreement, the complex nature of historical research and the need for academic exploration. And finally, in case readers still aren't getting his drift, Mr. Bellesiles sums it all up in his conclusion: "There are those who rest their very identity on the notion of a certain, unchanging past. The vision that society is unalterable is not just incorrect, it is dangerously undemocratic, and as such should be of concern to every modern historian."
In fact, the academic world is hardly a monolothic creature that resists all change. If it were, we'd still be trying to explain how the sun moves around the Earth. Most historians and scientists are wise enough to realize that new discoveries or interpretations hold out opportunity. But before they completely cast aside mountains of research, they usually demand some proof. Mr. Bellesiles's problem isn't that he's misunderstood; it's that he still hasn't given them any.
Or as the old saying goes: "To be a persecuted genius, you not only have to be persecuted; you also have to be right."
Posted by Editor at 3:44 PM
| Comments (0) Click here to return to the top of the page. Monday, February 2, 2004 Gary E. Moulton: The Historian Who Edited the Journals of Lewis & Clark--All 13 Volumes Bill Graham, writing in the Kansas City Star (Feb. 1, 2004):
In January 1804, William Clark felt ill as he waited near St. Louis for a trek with Meriwether Lewis to the Pacific.
He had broken through ice the day before while trying to cross a pond on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River.
After the dunking, Clark wrote, “I returned before Sun Set, and found that my feet, which were wet, had frozed to my Shoes, which rendered precaution necessary to prevent a frost bite, the Wind from the W, across the Sand Islands in the mouth of the Missouries, raised Such a dust that I could not see in that derection, the Ice Continue to run & river rise Slowly – exceeding Cold day.”
This year, as America celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition from St. Louis to Oregon and back, history buffs will be able to track details and daily life along the trail largely because a University of Nebraska historian — Gary E. Moulton — labored two decades to bring the words of “the writingest explorers of their time'' to life. Such as:
“Christmas 25th Decr:'' Clark wrote in 1803. “I was wakened by a Christmas discharge (gunfire) found that Some of the party had got Drunk (2 fought), the men frolicked and hunted all day, Snow this morning, Ice run all day, Several Turkey Killed Shields returned with a cheese & 4 lb butter, Three Indians Come to day to take Christmas with us.”
Such are the passages to be gleaned from The Definitive Journals of Lewis and Clark , a 13-volume edition edited by Moulton, 61, of Lincoln, Neb.
The authors are Lewis and Clark and four of their enlisted men on one of America's greatest scientific explorations and wilderness adventures.
Modern writers have mined phrases from expedition records for books billed as the journals of Lewis and Clark. But they used only excerpts, often focused mostly on the Rocky Mountains and the Far West.
Only Moulton has compiled every journal, map, field note and scribble on a scrap of paper into a complete and authoritative account of what the explorers wrote.
“Our goal,” he said, “was to get every word of Lewis and Clark accessible to the public. We couldn't slight a particular place because we weren't interested in it.”
Posted by Editor at 7:53 PM
| Comments (0) Click here to return to the top of the page. John Hope Franklin: Writing His Autobiography Darryl Owens, writing in the Ft. Wayne News Sentinel (Jan. 30, 2004):
Sometimes, history needs a nudge. And other times, only a good arm-twisting will do.
John Hope Franklin ought to know. Twice he nearly missed his waltz with history, flirting with sexier prospects.
When he was an undergraduate at Fisk University, it took a dynamic professor to nudge him into his quest. The second time it took extra prodding.
Franklin received a letter from a publishing house suggesting he write a book on African-American history. "I said, `Maybe down the road,'" he recalls.
But the publishing representative visited and "really twisted my arm" with a philosophical charge and a $500 advance: "He told me this is what I ought to do. I decided I'd better take him on."
That decision led Franklin to write a seminal volume that would not only record the fractured history of African-Americans in the diaspora but also launch an unparalleled career in letters and activism.
"John Hope Franklin is by any measurement one of the premier historians of our time," says Richard Blackett, the Andrew Jackson professor of history at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. His "commitment to the struggle against inequality and oppression, his mentoring of younger students, makes him, in every sense, a gentleman and a scholar."
Now, 57 years later, "From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans," is in its eighth edition and continues to speak about the place of stolen Africans in American history.
But these days Franklin is examining history from an uncharacteristic vantage point: his 89 years.
With perhaps his final major project, tentatively titled "Vintage Years: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin," he is shifting his critical lens to study the nexus between his life as a black man and the history of a people often pushed to the margins of American experience.
"I don't know," Franklin says when asked what his book will reveal about the man considered the dean of black historians. "I just bare my soul."
In a real way, his childhood offers a snapshot of the extremes of black American life.
Born in 1915 in Rentiesville, a black village 65 miles south of Tulsa, Okla., Franklin was named after John Hope, a black educator and opponent of Booker T. Washington's accommodationist ideas for blacks. As the son of a lawyer and a schoolteacher, "I grew up thinking that you were supposed to read and write all your waking hours," Franklin says.
He learned that race mattered when a white conductor booted him from a train for daring to sit in the "white-only" coach. As the 6-year-old boy and his mother walked the six miles back to Rentiesville, his eyes burned with shame.
Don't cry over the law, his mother said. And she reassured him with words that would lodge in his soul: You're as good as anybody. Prove you're better than that.
Posted by Editor at 7:47 PM
| Comments (0) Click here to return to the top of the page. Friday, January 30, 2004 Obituary of Military Historian John Terraine
Anthony Trythall, writing in the London Independent (Jan. 23, 2004):
JOHN TERRAINE was one of the outstanding military historians of the 20th
century. His intellect, scholarship and breadth and sharpness of vision marked
him out amongst his peers as one to be listened to with great care and attention,
and challenged with circumspection, although challenged he was.
The fundamental reason for the controversy he aroused, and the challenges
his challenges met, was that his study of generalship in the First World War
led him to criticise, indeed demolish, the argument that British generals
in the period 1914-18 were all "donkeys", that their actions simply
led to slaughter and disaster. What he could not abide was the "Oh! What
a Lovely War" syndrome espoused by the historical, political and pacifist
left and also to some extent by B.H. Liddell Hart. In his work he made a very
strong case for the view that British generals were actually pretty good and,
in the end, unlike their enemies, won the war with a great victory.
Terraine was right, but those who questioned his position did also have a
point. A central characteristic of scholarship is that its conclusions always,
and should always, lead to further questions. He would almost certainly, on
a good day, have accepted that dialectic. In a book review in 1977 he pointed
out that J.F.C. Fuller's "Plan 1919" for ending the war (the antithesis
of attrition) was really only a variation of what actually took place in 1918:
open warfare but without many tanks, which were not ready technologically
or available in sufficient numbers - again a dialectical point. Perhaps one
criticism of Terraine's work that carries some weight is that his judgements
were primarily military; when millions die other considerations do have to
be heard.
The books in which Terraine made his case included: Mons: the retreat to
victory (1960), Douglas Haig: the educated soldier (1963), The Road to Passchendaele
(1977), To Win a War: 1918, the year of victory (1978), The Smoke and the
Fire: myths and anti-myths of war 1861-1945 (1980) and White Heat: the new
warfare 1914-18 (1982). Perhaps the most succinct summary of his views is
contained in a chapter, "British Military Leadership in the First World
War", in Home Fires and Foreign Fields (1985). This contains the typically
Terraine-like comment apropos of Alan Clark's "donkeys and lions"
attribution to Luderdorff and Hoffman, "Curiously enough, when pressed,
Mr Clark failed to offer any source for this reported conversation."
Terraine's historical writing was not, however, confined to the land campaigns
of the First World War. He also wrote Business in Great Waters: the U-boat
wars 1916-45 (1989) and a definitive work on the RAF, The Right of the Line:
the Royal Air Force in the European war 1939-45 (1985), which won the Yorkshire
Post Book of the Year Award. A senior RAF officer was heard to say about this
book in the Royal United Services Institute that he had learnt the last one
and a half pages by heart.
John Alfred Terraine was born in 1921 and educated at Stamford School and
Keble College, Oxford, of which he was elected an Honorary Fellow in 1986.
Although he twice volunteered, poor health prevented him from undertaking
military service and in 1944 he joined the BBC, where he remained until 1964,
serving as Pacific and South African programme organiser from 1953 to 1963.
He then became a freelance historian, and in 1964-65 acted as associate producer
and chief scriptwriter of the BBC TV Great War series. Other television series
followed, notably The Life and Times of Lord Mountbatten (1966-68) and European
History in the 20th Century (1974-75).
Posted by Editor at 9:32 PM
| Comments (0) Click here to return to the top of the page. Remembering Juergen Sielemann, the German Archivist Who Helped Jews Find Out About Their Lost Ancestors
John Burgess, writing in the Wash Post (Jan. 28, 2004):
Sallyann Sack recalls the rainy day in 2000 that she spent on the Hamburg
waterfront, hoping to find clues to the voyage her grandmother had begun there
a century earlier. The rooming houses where the 16-year-old Jewish girl might
have stayed before traveling alone to America had disappeared; so had most
of the administrative buildings of the time.
But then her guide said, "Sally, I cannot show you the boarding house
where your grandmother stayed when she was waiting to board the ship, but
I can promise you that she walked along this street."
With those words, the Bethesda woman said she felt suddenly and profoundly
the presence of her forebear. The gift came courtesy of Juergen Sielemann,
a courtly German who at his desk at the Hamburg State Archive has made it
his business for more than 30 years to organize and publicize the historical
record of Jews in Hamburg. On his own time, he helps people such as Sack who
come to conduct searches on a more personal scale.
On Tuesday evening, Sielemann stood before the German Parliament in Berlin
and accepted an Obermayer German Jewish History Award for his efforts. Back
in Bethesda, Sack was particularly happy to hear the news because she was
one of several people who had nominated him for the honor. The award is presented
each year to five non-Jewish Germans who have made outstanding contributions
to the reassembling of the German Jewish record, shattered more than half
a century ago.
"I have been personally touched" by the history of Hamburg's Jews,
Sielemann said Tuesday in an interview, explaining his dedication to a community
that was all but wiped out by Nazi deportations. "It upsets me. I feel
I have to do something, and I feel I'm not doing enough."
His thick glasses and calm manner fit the image of a profession based on
the love of documents, and he seemed both amused by and uneasy with the attention
his work has generated.
But Sielemann is something of a star in the world of Jewish genealogy. A
regular at conferences in the United States, Britain and Israel, he is renowned
for his encyclopedic knowledge -- he knows the street numbers of those lost
boarding houses, for example. He founded Germany's only Jewish genealogical
society. And he has helped put Hamburg's emigration records online so that
people worldwide can search for information about forebears who might have
set out from the North German port en route to the United States.
"He's one of those Germans who's devoted their professional lives to
making sure that Jewish heritage and history isn't lost," Sack said.
"He obviously feels as a German the burden of the Holocaust."
Frank Bajohr, a historian at the Research Institute for Contemporary History
in Hamburg who has conducted research with Sielemann, said the man has remarkable
energy. "He's highly engaged," said Bajohr, a specialist in Nazi confiscation
of Jewish property.
The awards were given on the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz
death camp, which Germany has adopted as an official day of remembrance of the
victims of Nazism. In Parliament on Tuesday morning, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder,
his cabinet and legislators listened reverently to an address by Simone Veil,
an Auschwitz survivor who became president of the European Parliament.
Through such events, Germans learn their country's history. Some prefer to
forget it, others invest their own time and money in making sure that no one
will. Tuesday's recipients of the prize, which is administered by the Massachusetts-based
Obermayer Foundation, also included a doctor who has restored a Jewish cemetery,
recovering old headstones that had been used for steps in nearby houses, and
another doctor who helped save a former Jewish community center from demolition.
As Sielemann tells it, he pretty much stumbled into his life work. He was born
in 1944, just south of Hamburg, and so has no personal memories of the prewar
community or the war. As a 20-year-old with a general interest in history, he
was hired by the Hamburg State Archive in 1966 and three years later took over
the Jewish files.
There were quite a few. Hamburg's Jews had agreed in the 19th century to deposit
their documents with the government for safekeeping, and many of those papers
survived the Allied bombs -- birth, marriage and death certificates from local
synagogues were there to examine. So were passenger lists from the ships that
took immigrants from all over Central and Eastern Europe across the Atlantic.
As he made his way through the stacks of papers, Sielemann said, he became
fascinated with the centuries-long Jewish presence in Hamburg. In 1933, the
year Adolf Hitler took power, there were about 24,000 people in the city observing
three strands of Judaism.
But for years, he felt as if he were laboring alone on an island. In Germany
until the late 1970s, he said, "there was really no interest, there was
no discussion, there was nothing on the subject of the Holocaust and Jewish
history. Silence. . . . So that meant that the younger generation had to learn
not from the elder generation but by themselves."
Gradually he began to make contacts with survivors from abroad, with relatives
of the dead and with a small but reconstituting Jewish community in Hamburg
itself.
Sack, a clinical psychologist who is active in genealogical groups, first came
into contact with Sielemann in 1984, when he wrote to ask her if a gentile would
be welcome at a conference the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington
was organizing in Jerusalem. She recalls laughing and responding: Of course,
as long as you pay the fee.
A string of initiatives followed from her friend in Hamburg: in 1996 the German
Jewish genealogical society, in 1999 the online directory. Last year, he was
the driving force behind an invitation that the Hamburg city government extended
to the descendants of the one millionth immigrant who embarked at Hamburg.
On Wednesday, Sielemann planned to head back to his office in Hamburg. For
her part, Sack said she felt embarrassed that she didn't nominate her friend
for the prize earlier. The reason, she said, was that "he seems so much
like one of us, even though he's not Jewish."
Posted by Editor at 8:43 PM
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